Football, Olympics Win National Popularity Contest

Americans love football, the Olympics, baseball, basketball and figure skating, making those the most popular spectator sports in the country.

They hate to watch wrestling, golf, boxing, Roller Derby and hockey-or at least enough people do to put those sports atop the most unpopular list.

Men and women disagree strongly about every Top 20 sport except the Olympics, swimming, skiing and thoroughbred racing. Men are big on football, baseball, basketball and boxing; women go for skating and gymnastics.

Auto racing may pack huge crowds, but Indy-CART ranks only No. 26 in popularity, just behind NASCAR. And floating somewhere between mild interest and general indifference are tennis and World Cup soccer.

Those are some of the findings of the most detailed survey ever of America`s sports tastes, breaking down preferences by sex, age, income, race, job, household status, education and region to serve the $20 billion sports marketing industry.

The information may be just as valuable to the teams, television and radio networks and other businesses that account for an additional $55 billion in annual sports spending.

``There`s so much money at stake in sports marketing and advertising. We needed all the information we could get,`` said Nye Lavalle, chairman of the Sports Marketing Group in Dallas, who released results of the survey Wednesday to the Associated Press after keeping them secret for proprietary reasons since last year.

In interviews at homes in 175 key census areas nationwide, 2,060 people were asked for their opinions of 71 participant sports and 114 spectator sports they might attend, follow on television or radio or read about in newspapers or magazines.

The choices included ``love the sport,`` ``one of my favorites,``

``dislike`` and ``hate.``

The survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percent, differed from attendance studies that didn`t account for repeat spectators. Television ratings showed viewer strength but didn`t indicate how people felt about sports that weren`t televised in their area.